Thursday, April 23, 2009

Campaign Day 10 (cont'd)....Pushing Back Against The Wurlitzer

Herds'RUs
CampaignTrailVille



Earlier, we pointed back to a particularly egregiously headlined and stupifyingly superficial CP Wire story that made a huge deal about the apparent anti-environmental 'symbolism' of Carole James using a plane to fly around Lotusland showing reporters where all the 'Wreck-of-River' projects are going to be concentrated while Gordon Campbell symbolically 'conserved' energy by heading down to the harbour for a paddle boat ride on Earth Day.

Which is no big deal because it's just a funny kinda/sorta 'who really cares' - type story, right?

Wrong.

Because everywhere you went media-wise 'round here today that story was one of the leads. In fact, I actually woke up to it when the alarm clock clicked onto the local dumb-guy (ie. sports) station this morning.

As a result, the cutsey little superficial slop-story that never quit shot to the top of the Google News page before noon (see screenshot above - just click to enlarge).

Anway, in response to my earlier diatribe, 'il postino' left an important message on the comment thread (stuff in brackets mine):

"The question is not whether or not this is crap (which is what I called it). The question is what we intend to do about it.

News sources that provide crappy coverage need to be told that their coverage is crap and then need to be told what happens when the crap becomes the norm for the outlet: boycott the outlet and let the outlet's advertisers know that the outlet is losing eyeballs/listeners etc. perhaps they'll change their ways.

I want media outlets that will speak truth to power.

I have the belief that if the NDP were in power, (Tyee proprietor David) Beers would kick the crap out of the NDP when they screwed up with no less force than he kicks the crap out of the Libs.

But as long as media consumers let the biased crap go, the media outlets will continue to give us that crap...."



So.

What to do?


.

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